Drone photos make the best phone wallpapers

It's standard to put pictures of dogs, spouses or (your own) children as wallpaper on your phone. But that's uninspired. You know what's different? Taking carefully-curated landscape drone photography and setting that as the backdrop to life instead. Gabriel Scanu is a photographer who works mostly in Sydney and Los Angeles. He specializes in taking aerial images with drones, turning uninspiring strips of road or forest into something quite beautiful. DON'T MISS: 6 things Apple needs to get right with iOS 10

A Fubiz feature on Scanu caught my attention, because the top-down landscape imagery reminds me of artists who have carefully curated Google Earth images to make stunning smartphone wallpapers. I think with a little work, Scanu's photos could do the same.

If you flick through his Instagram feed, it's more than just top-down landscape imagery. There's all sorts of photos, from night-time shots of the Matterhorn to surfers in South Africa. But there's something about straight-down drone photos that really captures my imagination. Scanu has at least one from every trip he's taken. Quite often, they show a road cutting through a pristine forest; other times, it's boats above a shallow sea, with all the fishes visible in the clear blue water below. Turning any of these into a kick-ass phone background is pretty simple: all of Scanu's images are on his Instagram, and iOS and Android will help you crop (just a little) to the correct aspect ratio for your device. Just remember to be honest about telling your friends where you found all the neat pictures when they ask.